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Wednesday, April 06, 2016

The Big 'Boogey Man'

Washington always needs a boogey man to justify a military empire consisting of 1,000 bases around the world and a Pentagon budget that consumes 54% of every federal discretionary tax dollar.

Russia, spending 4.8% of the global total of military spending, is now defined by Secretary of War Ashton Carter as the #1 enemy of the US. This enemy creation propaganda is designed to spread fear in the hearts of the American people and NATO allies in order to get citizens to pony up even more $$$ for the endless war machine.

Here is something I wrote on this subject back in 2007 that I'd like to share again. I think you will see the connections:

When I was a boy my family lived in South Dakota, just near the Black
Hills. We arrived at Ellsworth AFB in a blinding blizzard one winter. I
became completely mesmerized by Indian history, culture, and religion. I
read everything I could get my hands on about the "people" as the
Indians called themselves.

Our Sunday drives into
the Badlands and the Black Hills, and my hunting trips with my dad into
the Black Hills, provided me with up close contact with the land the
Lakota called the "paha sapa" - the heart of the Earth.

All
of my adult life I have continued to read about Native Americans and I
try to return to South Dakota whenever I can. The oldest poster on my
wall in my office is one I got in 1980, when my son Julian was in his
mothers womb, at the Black Hills International Survival Gathering.
The poster says "Don't weep for the earth - fight to save her!" At that
time we drove from Florida to the Black Hills to participate in this
event that was held just outside the gate of the B-52 bomber base at
Ellsworth - the same base I had lived on as a kid. The circle was
complete.

After
gold was discovered in the Black Hills the U.S. Army was sent in to
clear the Indians out of their paha sapa even though they had been
promised in a previous treaty that they would "own" this territory as
long as the grass grew green. The inevitable battle led to Custer's last
stand and the resulting major military campaign to bring the "hostiles"
onto reservations in the dusty lands of southwest South Dakota.

Crazy
Horse and Sitting Bull held out as long as they could. But the cold
winters and diminishing buffalo and other wild game forced them
ultimately to surrender. This process literally broke the hearts of the
people. The conditions of surrender were that they had to give up their
guns and their horses - essentially their very way of life.

The
government was to provide them with all they needed from then on. Food,
clothes, and even tepees. But they soon found out the promises were not
honored. The blankets they were given were so thin they could not keep
the people warm at night. The flour had bugs in it and the bacon was
rancid. The people could not even go and hunt anymore as their guns and
horses were gone. They continued to starve and die. But they honored
their word to the white man's government and stayed peaceful.

The
weapons contractors, that had grown rich from the Indian wars in the
1860's, were getting restless. This peace with Crazy Horse and Sitting
Bull was cutting into their previous enormous profits. So they came up
with a plan.

They
created a national public relations campaign and had artists create
renderings of Crazy Horse on the war path again killing settlers and
raping white women and children. These stories were placed in the big
newspapers across the country and the public became outraged. Soon the
Congress appropriated more funds to return the "hostiles" to the
reservation.

In
fact, during this campaign of deception, Crazy Horse was sitting in his
tepee on the reservation without a gun or horse to his name.

When
you think about it the story is virtually the same today in Iraq. The
government creates a pubic relations campaign about weapons of mass
destruction and then sells the story using the mainstream media to
justify a war and make enormous profits for the weapons corporations.

When I was in the Air Force, during the Vietnam War, I learned how they did the same thing to sell that war as I read The Pentagon Papers- the government's own secret history of how they lied to create that war.

The process is again under way today in Asia as we see the U.S. beginning to provoke and demonize China in a new arms race that would bring huge profits to the war industry.

They
say that every criminal has an MO - modus operandi - method of
operation. When I was young I wanted to be an FBI agent when I grew up
so I could fight against organized crime.

Then one day I woke
up and realized that the military industrial complex was the essence of
organized crime. So I took myself to the peace movement where I could
fulfill my boyhood promise to work for "truth, justice, and the American
way."

Sometimes
I wonder if the fate of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and the other
native people will be the fate of the American people of today as well.
In order to pay for endless war the government, clearly under the
control of the military industrial complex as former President Dwight Eisenhower warned us,
is now moving to destroy social progress in our country as they cut
education, health care, and the like. In a way I wonder, are we now
being brought onto the reservation too?

Under
the New World Order job # 1 of corporate globalization is to maximize
profits internationally. Allegiance to country is a thing of the past.
Corporations move overseas to seek the lowest wage workers possible.
Unemployment grows and the local tax base drys up as jobs leave the U.S.
The process of corporate disinvestment in America is underway. The
Pentagon says that "security export" will be our role under corporate globalization. Endless war.

What can we learn from the time of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull?

Crazy
Horse is remembered for these words: "A very great vision is needed and
the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue
of the sky."

What is our vision for the future of North America and for our Mother Earth?